On 22 June, the 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale ended with commendable results at Phillips Hong Kong.
Amongst 44 lots offered, 42 were sold – which attained a sale total of HK$214 million (around US$27.2 million) dollars. American figurative artist, George Condo’s Transparent Female Forms masterpiece was the sale’s most valuable lot – which gathered HK$36.5 million (around US$4.6 million) dollars.
During the sale, American contemporary artist, Lucy Bull’s 8:50 work was the sale’s most surprising lot. Hammered at 9.2 times its low estimate, it realised HK$11.3 million (around US$1.44 million) dollars – which set a new auction record for the artist.
Condo's Transparent Female Forms painting was hammered at HK$30 million dollars
Lot 9 | George Condo | Transparent Female Forms, Acrylic, chalk and pastel on linen
Created in 2009
198.1 x 289.2 cm
Provenance:
- Skarstedt Gallery, New York
- Private Collection
- Phillips, New York, 7 December 2020, Lot 26
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$25,000,000 – 35,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$30,000,000
Sold: HK$36,550,000 (around US$4.6 million)
Benoit Repellin with the winning bid
The auctioneer, Jonathan Crockett, started the bidding at HK$20 million dollars. After 10 bids, the hammer was dropped at HK$30 million dollars. The winning bid went to Benoit Repellin, Head of Jewels, Europe; for his client with paddle number 1031. In the end, it garnered HK$36.5 million (around US$4.6 million) dollars with buyer’s premium.
In 2017, Condo's Young Girl with Blue Dress work starred at Phillips Hong Kong. Estimated between HK$3 and 5 million dollars, it realised HK$12.1 million (around US$1.5 million) dollars – which exceeded expectations and set a new Asian auction record. Three years later, in 2020, his Force Field painting fetched HK$53.1 million (around US$6.7 million) dollars – which broke the global auction record for the artist at Christie’s Hong Kong.
Condo's Young Girl with Blue Dress (2007) | Phillips Hong Kong, 2017 | Sold: HK$12.1 million (around US$1.5 million)
Condo's Force Field (2010) | Christie's Hong Kong, 2020 | Sold: HK$53.1 million (around US$6.7 million)
George Condo
Deeply inspired by his idol, Spanish Master Pablo Picasso, Condo invented his trademark style of psychological cubism. Fusing figurative and abstract elements, he depicts grotesque characters with snarled grimaces, exaggerated body parts and fragmentation.
A kaleidoscope of neon-pastel hues drizzled across a neutral ground, are superimposed with gestural improvisations that lend the work to a sense of rhythm invoking Condo’s connection with music – which he studied alongside art history in university. Sensuous female figures that traverse the composition appear in and out of the picture plane – their faces adorned with elegant pearls, full lips and luscious hair are rendered with fluidity.
Created in 2009, this painting marked the beginning of a decade-long dedication to his Drawing Paintings series. It was also a professional turning point for the artist – as it was a year before the artist’s inclusion in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York’s 2010 Biennial, and two years before his monumental mid-career retrospective at the New Museum, New York.
Lot 11 | Matthew Wong | Pink Wave, Oil on canvas
Created in 2017
121.9 x 152.4 cm
Provenance:
- Karma Gallery, New York
- Private Collection
- Sotheby's, New York, 8 December 2020, Lot 6
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$16,000,000 – 26,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$18,500,000
Sold: HK$22,635,000 (around US$2.8 million)
Charlotte Raybaud with the winning bid
The bidding started at HK$12 million dollars. After nearly 10 bids, the hammer was downed at HK$18.5 million dollars. The winning bid went to Charlotte Raybaud, Head of Evening Sale, Hong Kong; for her client with paddle number 1092. In the end, it garnered HK$22.6 million (around US$2.8 million) dollars with buyer’s premium.
The robust market interest for Matthew Wong’s works is hard to miss in the sales during the past few seasons. His works made their auction debut in 2020 – a year after he took his own life at the age of 35.
Largely self-taught, this Chinese-Canadian artist created about 1,000 works before his passing. He is known for presenting seemingly contradictory ambiance with his ebullient palette.
Matthew Wong
Inspired by his daydreams, movies and long walks, Wong’s imagined landscapes are suffused with a poetic sorcery that ignites the surfaces of his compositions – an eternal dance that permits midnight forests to burn in the darkness, stretches ivory tundra infinite, and make flora and fauna become interchangeable.
He combined thick impasto strokes with sweeping tracks of pattern and expanses of black canvas in a harmony that demanded incongruity yet delivered harmony. This is epitomised in this present lot – where teal and navy horizontals are broken up by the broad burgundy coastline and the speckled beach, while the golden tributary is crowned by a floral explosion of fuchsia.
Bull's 8:50 work was hammered at HK$9.2 million dollars
Lot 3 | Lucy Bull | 8:50, Oil on canvas
Created in 2020
93 x 296.5 cm
Provenance:
- Smart Objects, Los Angeles
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,000,000 – 1,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$9,200,000
Sold: HK$11,382,000 (around US$1.44 million)
In May 2022, during her auction debut, Bull's Special Guest oeuvre realised US$907,200 dollars – which set an auction record for the American artist at Sotheby's New York. As for this present lot, 8:50, it is her first work featured in an Asian auction.
The bidding started at HK$750,000 dollars, while the hammer was downed at HK$9.2 million dollars – 9.2 times its low estimate. The winning bid went to Meiling Lee, Senior International Specialist, Taipei; for her client with paddle number 1077. In the end, it garnered HK$11.3 million (around US$1.44 million) dollars with buyer’s premium.
Bull's Special Guest (2019) | Sotheby's New York, 2022 | Sold: US$907,200
Lucy Bull
After a breakout show at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles last year, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate has become darling of both collectors and critics alike: the former jostling for her arenas of psychedelia, the latter heralding her as the new champion of Western abstraction. Her works are collected by prestigious cultural institutions around the world – such as Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCO), Geneva; and the Dallas Museum of Art.
Measuring 93 by 296.5 centimetres, 8:50 stands as one of the artist’s largest works. Bull’s work is defined by contrasts – precision and abandon, order and chaos, concord and discord. Visually stimulating, the audience is drawn into Bull’s colourful fields and patterns that seem to defy the pictorial space and wrap the audience in their limitless undulations.
Lot 28 | Lee Ufan | From Line No. 790372, Oil and mineral pigment on canvas
Created in 1979
135.2 x 166.8 cm
Provenance:
- Takagi Gallery, Nagoya
- Himawari Gallery, Tokyo (acquired from the above in 1996)
- Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1998)
- Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2009)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$9,000,000 – 14,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$9,000,000
Sold: HK$11,140,000 (around US$1.41 million)
The bidding started at HK$5 million dollars. After more than 5 bids, the hammer was downed at HK$9 million dollars. The winning bid went to Charlotte Raybaud, Head of Evening Sale, Hong Kong; for her client with paddle number 1037. In the end, it garnered HK$11.1 million (around US$1.41 million) dollars with buyer’s premium.
Responding to the rapid industrialisation of Japan during the 1970s, Korean Minimalist artist Lee Ufan turns away from Western notions of representation. He returns to calligraphy and Japanese Nihonga style of painting for inspiration, which traditionally uses ink and mineral pigments on paper or silk. Created in 1979, From Line No. 790372 is an example of the artist’s early celebrated series concentrating on the method of repetition, of which he dedicated more than 10 years of his life between 1973 and 1984 in creating.
Lee prepares simple raw materials by himself and specially hand mixes cobalt pigment with glue to create the rich blue hue. He rotates the canvas in 90 degrees and pulls horizontally from left to right. The simultaneous calligraphic brushstrokes become vertical starting at the top, diminish gradually at the bottom as it runs thinner and fall off the lower edge of the canvas.
Lee Ufan
Other highlight lots:
During this sale, many contemporary artists’ works were hammered at multiple times their estimates – most notably young female or of African descent – such as Ayako Rokkaku, Anna Weyant, Anna Park; Aboudia, Ernie Barnes and Emmanuel Taku.
Lot 41 | Ayako Rokkaku | Untitled, Acrylic on canvas
Created in 2019
121 x 190 cm
Provenance:
- Gallery Delaive, Amsterdam
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$2,000,000 – 3,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$6,500,000
Sold: HK$8,115,000 (around US$1 million)
Lot 18 | Ernie Barnes | Life After Sundown, Acrylic on canvas
Created in 1979
92 x 122 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection, Italy (gifted by the artist)
- Thence by descent to the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,500,000 – 2,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$4,800,000
Sold: HK$6,048,000 (around US$760,000)
Lot 8 | Anne Weyant | Chest, Oil on canvas
Created in 2020
45.7 x 60.6 cm
Provenance:
- WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$500,000 – 700,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,300,000
Sold: HK$4,158,000 (around US$520,000)
Lot 4 | Scott Kahn | Soundview, Oil on linen
Created in 2008
76.3 x 86.4 cm
Provenance:
- Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles
- Private Collection
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$900,000 – 1,400,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,200,000
Sold: HK$4,032,000 (around US$510,000)
Lot 40 | Robert Nava | Shark Wing Pegasus, Acrylic, spray paint and grease pencil on canvas
Created in 2019
182.2 x 213.2 cm
Provenance:
- v1 Gallery, Copenhagen
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,200,000 – 1,800,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,000,000
Sold: HK$3,780,000 (around US$470,000)
Lot 36 | Trey Abdella | Some Things Aren’t Worth Waiting For, Acrylic, spray paint, modelling paste, Plexiglas, glitter, velvet, rhinestones and plastic gold chain on canvas
Created in 2019
122 x 172.7 cm
Provenance:
- Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles
- Private Collection
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$600,000 – 900,000
Hammer Price: HK$2,100,000
Sold: HK$2,646,000 (around US$330,000)
Lot 46 | Aboudia | Take Me II, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, diptych
Created in 2011
Each: 117.5 x 137 cm | Overall: 117.5 x 274 cm
Provenance:
- Jack Bell Gallery, London
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$500,000 – 700,000
Hammer Price: HK$2,000,000
Sold: HK$2,520,000 (around US$320,000)
Lot 35 | Anna Park | I to I, Charcoal and graphite on panel
Created in in 2019
182.8 x 121.4 cm
Provenance:
- Over the Influence, Los Angeles
- Private Collection, Paris
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$300,000 – 500,000
Hammer Price: HK$1,800,000
Sold: HK$2,268,000 (around US$280,000)
Lot 45 | Emmanuel Taku | Brothers in Red, Acrylic and newspaper on canvas
Created in 2020
211.8 x 143.2 cm
Provenance:
- Noldor Residency, Accra
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$300,000 – 500,000
Hammer Price: HK$1,200,000
Sold: HK$1,512,000 (around US$190,000)
Auction Details:
Auction House: Phillips Hong Kong
Sale: 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Date: 22 June 2022
Number of lots: 44
Sold: 42
Unsold: 2
Sale Rate: 95.4%
Sale Total: HK$214,090,000 (around US$27.2 million)